This week’s reading from Isaiah describes what we’ve come to call “The Peaceable Kingdom,” in which predators and prey live in peace. Before going there, though, Isaiah stresses the roots of peace in justice: a community in which all, particularly the most vulnerable, are protected.

Sorry it’s late this week!

Transcript

This coming Sunday is the second Sunday in Advent, and in at least one of the Advent traditions (the one I follow), it is the Sunday for Peace.

Appropriately enough, the Old Testament Scripture for this Sunday comes from the eleventh chapter of Isaiah (Isaiah 11:1-10), and it is one of Isaiah’s more comprehensive prophecies – wishes – visions – of what true, ultimate peace would look like. Here we have the lion lying down with the lamb, and and all of the animals getting together and not eating one another. It’s a comprehensive peace.

Well, there’s a couple of things that intrigue me. First of all, there is that notion of just how great peace is, that it’s not just non-violence between human beings but it extends to the rest of the created order. That is, in fact, a very… Well, it’s a vision that we have not seen in our lifetimes and indeed probably not in the lifetime of the human family. We can’t even manage to discourage violence between each other, let alone between those other creatures with whom we share this earth.

Nevertheless, it is worth holding that vision and knowing that this is what we’re striving for.

The other aspect of this text that is just inescapable is how much Isaiah emphasizes the role of rulers in being just, in making decisions with righteousness and particularly to favor the most vulnerable among the population. In fact, Isaiah goes there before he ever goes toward the lion and the lamb.